Category: Trends and Musings

Obtaining US Ancestors Immigration Documentation – What You Need to Know

In May, I requested an index search request for $20.00 from the USCIS website.  I’ve always meant to do so but never got around to it.  I had read a blog on Judy Russell’s Legal Genealogist site that mentioned the price may be going up dramatically so I decided the time was now and quickly followed through with the request.

You must complete and index search request ($20.00) if you don’t know the Case ID number.  A Case ID number is needed to request Alien Registration Forms (AR-2) and Naturalization Certificates (C-File) which are an additional $20.00-35.00. I was requesting two index searches, one for each of my maternal grandparents.

In August, I received a letter in the US mail that provided me with a Case ID number for my grandmother.  The letter referred me to the Department of Homeland Security website so that I could obtain the AR-2 and C-File.  I tried to follow the directions but I was unable to gain access.  Frustrated, I decided to try from different computers as I wasn’t sure if cookie settings were the problem.  After making a number of attempts from my home’s laptop, desktop, Kindle, phone and my work computer I came to the conclusion it wasn’t me.

The only way to contact the agency is via email.  I was livid when I received a response stating they would respond by December.  Seriously?!

A survey popped up and I took the time to complete it;  I mentioned the poor customer service access, the long delay between the letter’s date (July 8) and receiving it (date stamped August 18), lack of a functional website and that my initial request was for two searches and I only had one returned. I also sent an email to the agency on August 22 because their phones don’t work.  Here’s the response:

“It is our goal to complete all requests within 90 days of receipt. 

Nevertheless, due to an increased volume of requests we are now answering:

  • Index Search Requests (Form G-1041) received in MARCH 2016.
  • Record Requests (Form G-1041A) received in FEBRUARY 2016. Please note that pending record requests submitted prior that date are waiting for files or privacy screenings.”

Clearly the response isn’t even accurate as I didn’t even request the documents until May and had half of my request returned in August.

The following day I received this email response:

“Your payment has been submitted to Pay.gov and the details are below. If you have any questions or you wish to cancel this payment, please contact the USCIS Genealogy Program at (866) 259-2349.”

I called the number but never could reach anyone.

I was pleasantly surprised to receive an email from James Igoe on October 3rd that attached my grandmother’s C-File.  I responded with a thank you and then asked for an update on where my grandfather’s file was.  Here’s the response I received on October 3rd:

“It is our goal to complete all requests within 90 days of receipt. 

Nevertheless, due to an increased volume of requests we are now answering:

  • Index Search Requests (Form G-1041) received in MARCH 2016.
  • Record Requests (Form G-1041A) received in FEBRUARY 2016. Please note that pending record requests submitted prior that date are waiting for files or privacy screenings.”

Sound familiar?!  Between August 22nd and October 3rd the agency had made NO progress with their backlog.

My advice, if you need to request records, is to do so with out delay cause it’s going to be a long, long time before you receive them.

The Adoption Trend

Originally published on genealogyatheart.blogspot.com on 25 Sep 2016

In the past six months I’ve been approached by two clients who had adoption inquiries.  I used to be contacted by folks who were adopted and were searching for their birth parents but lately, I’ve noticed a different trend.

The first individual discovered she was adopted while she was at college.  Her assigned roommate swore she knew someone back home that looked identical to her.  This was before Facebook and email so seeing a picture or contacting the “twin” had to wait. In the spring of her freshman year the client visited the roommate’s home and upon entering, roommate’s family remarked about the resemblance.  Unfortunately, the client wasn’t able to meet this “twin” because the “twin” was out of town as it was her spring break, too.  Everywhere the client went that week she encountered people who called her by the “twin’s” name.  Finally, someone showed her a picture and indeed, there was a striking resemblance.  A few weeks after the client returned to college she was contacted by the “twin’s” father.  He had heard of the client’s visit and wondered if perhaps, they were related.  The client called her parents who fessed up – she had been adopted and they knew who her parents were.  Yes, the “twin’s” father was her father, too.  When this client called me I thought she was interested in tracing her birth parents’ lines but she wasn’t.  Her adopted parents were an older couple who had recently died and she wanted to know about their families.  She felt that they had given her their family’s customs and norms and she was more a part of their lineage than her birth parents.  Shortly after working for this client an episode of Genealogy Roadshow aired and an adopted woman was to trying to verify a family story told to by her adopted parents.  As part of their family, she felt the story was a part of her history, too.

Last month,I was contacted by another individual who asked me to complete lineage paperwork for her sister.  I thought this was going to be fairly quick as the client’s mother had been a part of the organization.  When I mentioned I would need the birth certificate the client let me know that her “sister” had been adopted.  The organization that the ladies were interested in joining does not accept applications unless bloodline is proved. After explaining that I thought there might be a way around this dilemma.  Often children are adopted by other family members and if that was the case, proving kinship might still be viable.  Unfortunately, that wasn’t the situation.  The woman, who is in her 50’s, had discovered who her birth parents were and confirmed it through dna testing a few years ago.  I offered to research the birth parents but client and her sister weren’t interested.  They had been raised as siblings and if they couldn’t join as siblings they weren’t interested.

As our society evolves so does the concept of family.  My opinion is we are all related anyway.  If the inquiry is to learn more about customs and norms than I understand why there is an interest.  If the concern is medical, however, it may or may not be valid.  We’re all aware that lifestyle effects health but so does our genetic makeup.  My prediction is that genealogy software is going to  catch up to enable a connection between two sets of parents.

I Hate to Admit that an Unsourced Tree was Right!

Originally published on genealogyatheart.blogspot.com on 24 Jul 2016.

I do not want to start a genealogical war but I have to tell you about my recent experience with unsourced family trees and serendipity. I know it’s a touchy subject, the unsourced trees, I mean.

Years ago – perhaps 16-20 – not even sure the exact time period I trusted what I found on the internet without checking sources.  In my mind, why would anyone put out fraudulent information?  I knew mistakes could happen but I really believed that everyone else was more knowledgeable then me so whatever was posted had to be mostly correct.  That was until late one evening as I was happily clicking back on one of my husband’s lines and in the early morning hours, about 2 AM, I realized what  was on the screen couldn’t be correct.  There is no way that he was the grandson of Viking gods and goddesses.  That painful lesson – painful because it took me quite some time to delete all of it – woke me up to reality.

Unfortunately, there were other lines I had added information to prior to that realization and I had no way to verify accuracy of what I had recorded.  All of it was Swedish.  The data looked okay, meaning that the father’s first name became the child’s last name and the dates of birth and death looked correct so I just left it.  I wanted to check but I just didn’t know how as I don’t read Swedish. Verifying the accuracy of those lines went on my to-do list for someday.  I always could identify them because the PAF file I used had funny dates when I converted to gedcom – year-month-day instead of day-month-year.

I am happy to report that the day finally arrived and I can cross this off my to-do list!  In May I blogged about my purchase of a year subscription to Arkivdigital.  That organization has digitized church books throughout Sweden and they look real, compared to the white background on Ancestry’s digitized books.  The site works well, too!  You can bookmark records, play with the background shading if you like and there is lots of helpful information to point you in the direction you need to search. There are NO inaccurate tree leaves like on Ancestry to mislead you, either.  Although the leaves are helpful in most cases they are definitely not correct when it comes to Swedish records and they make me crazy!

I’ll be honest, I had my doubts I could use the Arkivdigital site since my Swedish language skills were limited to Ikea and Samuelson. Oh, and Huskqvarna.   I did  have a phone conference with the U.S. rep and watched her beginners video on Legacy Family Trees. I also went to Swedish Genealogy Center and poked around a bit.  Arkivdigital has English translations, too, so I was able to print out marriage records, for example, from the 1700’s so I knew common words to look for.  Although there was no standard way to record the records in the earliest church books the names seem to jump out in most cases.  Probably because they are so long – Kierstin Johannessdotter stands out among the short words like fodelse (birth) and dod (death).

I decided I would check those old lines and if they were wrong – Snip, Snap and Snur – they were getting cut!  I am pleased to report that EVERYONE of them was 100% correct.  That means that whoever put the info out there back in the early days of the internet really knew what they were doing.  I just wish I knew who the person was so I could thank and credit them!  I have entered citations for every record that I found – birth, death and marriage.  I added a snippet to the gallery of each individual and made the birth record, in most cases, the photo so I can easily see the line was completely researched.  I still have to go back and check out the household records and I want to add the sibling info, too, so I’ll be spending lots more time with Arkivdigital.

Which gets me to the real lesson here – there are very kind, smart people out there in the world who do share their findings, albeit, without sources.  Maybe, back in the day, their program didn’t allow them to enter a citation or maybe they just never thought to do it because they knew where they found it.  Whatever the reason, no one should discount looking at unsourced family trees.  I’m not recommending doing what I did – blindly copying – but getting ideas, contacting the owner and checking it out for yourself can really help you move forward.

And speaking of sharing…..

While I was updating my lines I discovered that my hubby’s dear 2 x’s great grandfather’s real name was not Anders August but Anders Ludvig Johannesson.  He changed his name to Gust Johnson after he arrived in Indiana.  I understand the Johnson part but the Gust?  Well, turns out he was born in August so he went by a shortened version of his birth month.  He died in the early 1900’s and we had no picture of him.  I have his marriage certificate to his second wife but some darling in the family removed the pictures before I found them in a suitcase in my in-law’s basement about 40 years ago.

When I updated my tree with the correct name it hit me that I also needed to update Find-A-Grave as I had created a memorial for him.  I was so surprised when I clicked on and discovered that a distant relative I had never heard of had uploaded a photo of him!  What a wonderful treat – was the best find I’ve had all summer!  Sent the gentleman a thank you and am hoping he has a pic of the second wife.  So here is the wonderful Anders “Gust” Johnson:

I love the faint “My Dad” on the left side right under the pic.  I suspect this is his 2nd wedding photo as he was 66 when he died and this looks like like a much younger man.  The resemblance to my husband is striking.

Notice that this appears to be in a photo book as the right edge looks like more pics.  How cool is that!  I so hope the gentleman responds and shares.  Keep those trees and photos coming!

So I found this just a few days before I left for my Pennsylvania-DC research trip.  I came home late Thursday evening (thanks, southwest airlines for the debacle!) and began the arduous task of downloading to my desktop all the photos I had taken while away.  Realizing I had hundreds, I decided to clean out my email first.

Ok, this is really really weird but here goes….

I decided to read the weekly newsletter I get from the New England Historic and Genealogy Society.  Why I picked that first I have no idea as I haven’t been doing anything with my New England lines this summer.  One of the articles was about Hoosier newspapers so I clicked the link since I have been doing alot with Indiana.  One click led to another and very soon I was on Porter County – Westchester Township pics and the first one that comes up…. was the Helen Chellberg handwritten above’s husband’s grandparents.  How strange is that?!  Porter County was a very rural area of Indiana back in the late 1800’s so there were several Chelllbergs who married into the Johnson and Samuelson families.  In fact, on Thursday, I had been at the National Archives and got the military records for Samuel August Samuelson who’s sister married the man who popped up on the Westchester Township site.  I thought that circle of connection was just incredible.

All I have to say is – universe – keep it coming!!!

Have a wonderful week –

Another FAN Consideration

Originally published on genealogyatheart.blogspot.com on 13 Jul 2016

I definitely enjoyed the following article, Letter of Recommendation, written by David Rees, that was published in the New York Times Magazine recently.  He identified with his grandmother, who he never knew, based on reading excerpts from her diary.  I have experienced similar emotions after reading the diary of a 2 x great aunt of my husband.  I think the major message here is that the more things change the more they stay the same. Although technology and societal changes continue to occur, people really don’t.  Rees’ read a diary written about 100 years ago and I read a diary that was written 130 years ago – both individuals had experiences and reactions that were basic to humanity today.

Rees’ article saddened me as he had no connection with his ancestors before coming across the manuscript.  I have a very small family, too, but the connection with my past was strong.  In hindsight, I guess I can attribute that to my grandmother, Mary Koss, who as the family matriarch, insured that the extended family kept in touch.  After her passing, the family contact ended.  I had to stop and calculate the following number, which shows how long it’s been since the family got together – I have 10 maternal cousins and 5 great cousins of which 2 are deceased.  Since my grandmother’s death, I have only seen 1 cousin in person and that was 5 years ago when I initiated the visit.  I have emailed with one of the great cousins but it ended rather abruptly as our theories of how the family name was changed don’t agree.  One simple little letter – an added “s” – at the end of the name created a gulf.  Silly?  Definitely.   It would have made my grandmother distressed.

For the majority of my cousins, though, we had no disagreements.  There was no wars, famines or other adverse situations that arose to part us.  Rather, we just led our lives in different places and with different circumstances, and along with the passage of time, we became disconnected.  I know my family is not alone.

This month, my grandmother would have celebrated her 116th birthday.  As I get ready to head out on a research trip combined with a business trip I’m thinking I’ll try to make an attempt at reconnecting when I return.  I know it’s time.

Genea Wishes- Wouldn’t it be nice if these genealogy tools were available…

Originally published on genealogyatheart.blogspot.com on 29 June 2016.

Was looking over some hints on Ancestry the other day and thought – wow, wouldn’t it be great if:

  • You could designate your guesses in some way – perhaps a color like yellow for caution – meaning that I’m not really sure yet and just checking this out so please don’t put it as fact in your tree.  I realize that this is most relevant for people like me who make their trees public so that others won’t just grab the guess as true.  Those that have their tree private, though, could also benefit as it would allow them to see what areas needed more analysis.
  • Use color to separate lines – make my Duers’ blue and my Leiningers’ green and my Koss’ purple, for example.  Then, when I was looking at a descendant I could easily identify their lineage.  I know there is supposed to be the actual connection listed but mine comes and goes:

See, it’s missing. It should say relationship unknown but it says nothing. Kate’s line does not link to my known lines as the connection was somewhere across the pond and hasn’t been rediscovered yet.   I don’t know why sometimes it displays and sometimes it doesn’t.  I would add that to my wish list, too – get it to work consistently!

  • A way to copy and paste a line to make a new tree while leaving the line in the original tree. Several years ago I had several trees and it made me crazy!  People would contact me about dear so and so and I had to hunt through all the trees to figure out who they were referring to because no one ever said, “I found so and so in your Main tree.”  When I asked there where they found it they would say, “online.”  So, I entered everything together. Actually, I merged it when the old Family Tree Maker worked.  It wasn’t perfect but it was fairly quick.  Now I’d like to do the opposite, take my Landfairs, for example, and just work on that line for a bit and then merge it back to the original tree.  This would also be nice if a distant relative wanted just their line.

All of this got me thinking of photos.  There are some people I would just love to have a picture of and after searching high and low still can’t find one.  There needs to be a vehicle to find those wanted photos.  I know about DeadFred.  That’s nice but I’m thinking more of a posting of a request for the photo and not that I found this picture.  In DeadFred, if I enter Harbaugh I get 3 photos of Alburmah Harbaugh which is interesting because I’ve updated all the Harbaughs known to be in the US since Cooprider and Cooprider did it in 1947 and he wasn’t one of them any Harbaugh source has found This validates what I already knew – my tree is incomplete.  Since genealogy is always a work in progress that doesn’t phase me.  But back to pictures…

I’d like a place where you can post that you want a photo, not just that you found a photo, which is what most of Cyndi’s list links are.  It would be even nicer if it had an ap so that lost photos, say from an antique shop, can be plugged in to see if someone is seeking that picture.  Granted, most of those photos have no identifying info.  My own family was really awful about documenting their photo’s, too. But if there was identifying info, the requester could be emailed or texted of where the photo is and can arrange to make the connection.  That’s a win-win for everyone – the store owner makes a sale, the finder feels awesome about doing a good deed and the requester gets the photo he/she wants!  Any ideas or suggestions about this please let me know – might be an area I work on once I finally submit that BCG portfolio.

Random Genealogy News

Originally published on genealogyatheart.blogspot.com on 9 June 2016.

Maybe due to the recent passing of Tropical Storm Colin through my area my thoughts are fairly random today! Several days of heavy rain and wind is pushing me to get outside and do some cleanup yard work so this will be brief!

First up – did you know that Family Tree Maker is back.  They have a newsletter that will keep you updated as to when they are going to start synching again with Ancestry.com.  If you’re a faithful reader you know I gave up on them about two years ago but now I’m thinking that maybe the problem was that I had the 2012 version and when they moved to the 2014 version it interfered with the synch. Neither FTM or Ancestry ever asked me what version I was using when I repeatedly called which says a lot about their customer support.  Anyway, the software is now owned by mackiev which used to make really good products, like Kidspics that my own children loved back in the day.   For $29.95 they’ll sell you their latest version of FTM at a discount if you had a previous one and I may do that as another backup.  To sign up for their newsletter click here.

Update to my last three blogs about frugality in genealogy – Should have definitely mentioned Linkedin and Facebook.  I use both and they are free!  Did you know that there are over 8,000 genealogy sites on Facebook?!  To view the list of them click here.

Two more reason to DO IT NOW! – Had a colleague from my educational job thank me for giving her the “Mean Momma” look when she told me two weeks ago that she had 14 boxes of family documents stored in an unair conditioned shed near a major river that floods.  I told her to move them in her house pronto but she insisted that she was going to spend the summer going through the boxes, one a week.  She had gone through 3 of the boxes when the flood advisory hit the area and she wasted no time in getting the boxes relocated in her home.  With the storm, she had time to go through them and found some wonderful genealogical stories that I’m encouraging her to write about and publish.  She’s an awesome writer so in the near future, look for a guest blog from her.

Another colleague asked me about how to go about collecting family history information.  I pointed her to my website that houses all of my blogs (www.genealogyatheart.com) and strongly encouraged her to talk with her parents when she went home for Memorial Day weekend.  When she returned the following Tuesday she told me that she relaxed all weekend and never got around to talking to her parents about the past.  Five days later one of her parents had a stroke and has lost the ability to speak.  Understandably, she is devastated on so many levels.  If that isn’t a wake up call for all of us, I don’t know what is!  Don’t delay – send that email, make that phone call, take the older relative to lunch and get the info today!

Those are my three random thoughts for the day – got to go get on the garden gloves and start picking up Spanish moss.

“Every Genealogy Record You Need is Online” – I Beg to Differ!

Originally published on genealogyatheart.blogspot.com on 25 May 2016.

I want to apologize in advance for this long blog.  Possibly, this should be two or three but due to the importance I don’t want to break it up.

Recently, I’ve heard and read in a number of places that there has been so many additions of records online that there is no reason to search elsewhere.  I vehemently disagree!

I wasn’t going to blog about this topic because I am so adamant that the statement is wrong I don’t even want it out there as a meme but I changed my mind due to the frequency this belief has been expressed lately. Here’s where that information popped up just in the past two weeks:

  • A listserv to which I belong
  • Two emails I received from hobbyists
  • The 18 May 2016 Legacy Family Tree Webinar by James M. Beidler
  • A volunteer genealogist at my local Family History Center

My own experience has shown me that there is nowhere near enough online “that many genealogy scenarios could be taken care of from start to finish using just online sources.”  I will agree that there is A LOT of records that are of value to genealogists that have been uploaded from a variety of sources since the beginning days of the internet.  I will also agree that someone COULD build a tree with just online sources. I know that practice is happening frequently but that doesn’t make it right.  In fact, I believe it’s not advisable to do that for many reasons.

Before I discuss the reasons to venture offline in your search, I want to identify why there’s this mistaken belief.  I’ve come up with the following:

  • Time – we live in a fast paced world and with all the day to day pressures we face to earn an income it is often not easy for us to visit an archive to check out documents that may or may not be available.  (One of the comments on the listserv was that it was a waste of time to look for an unknown record.)
  • Money – genealogy can get expensive and frugal genealogists don’t always have funds available to fly off in search of a record.  (One of the emails I received mentioned a fixed income limiting travel. That is a valid reality so I’ll be blogging soon about ways to maximize your income source so you can pursue genealogy.)
  • Advertisements – simply perform a search for “genealogy records” and you’ll receive 36,000,000 hits.  The first one that appears advertises a company that boasts “6.1 billion records & newspapers.  Powerful search technology – Start   2 billion profiles – Over 6.3 Billion records – 31 million family trees.”  No, that wasn’t even for Ancestry or Familysearch. Those large figures give the impression that there is everything in one place so you won’t need to look elsewhere. Don’t fall for it!
  • Ease of Access – why go in search of the unknown if you’ve got a known at your fingertips?  Plus, “millions” have already posted your family tree online which you can view and copy.

Putting that all together the thought process becomes that those billions of records are right there in front of you just waiting for your click! You’ve spent quite a bit of cash on membership so you want to get your money’s worth, which is understandable.  Why reinvent the wheel, just copy from someone else’s posted family tree and voila, you’re a genealogist.  From my experience that is far from reality and I know others have had similar situations that back up my claim.

Please be aware that I value online genealogy sources and highly recommend them as a starting point. Occasionally, if a client limits my time, I may have to just perform an online search.  I clearly note, though, in the report that further hours need to be spent performing a boots on the ground search.   You can’t be reasonably exhaustive unless you’ve done so.
I do look at unsourced trees online.  “Look” is the key word in the previous sentence!  Once I look I think about the validity and if it’s plausible, I’ll add it to my research plan to search for records.  Records is plural – I don’t rely on just one source.

For my Kinship Determination Project (KDP) portfolio submission for certification through the Board for Certification of Genealogists, I selected a family I am not related to but had much data previously found while researching online.  I started out by printing all of the documents and assembled them in folders by generations.

When I began to analyze the info I noticed in the second generation’s wife’s obituary that she had been a member of a particular church for many years.  Huh?  I had her online baptism record from a different denomination, marriage record (handed down through the family) not specifying a denomination and she was buried (online sources) in the same denomination as where she was baptized.  Did I have a mix up in identity?  Her maiden name was common but her married name was not.  So I got the cemetery record (NOT ONLINE) and then investigated the cemetery; it contained many different denominations and it was where her parents were interred.  That made sense.  I next decided to contact the church mentioned in the obituary where she had been a long time parishioner for any records.  It took me months to get a response.  Finally, I was told by the acting minister that a former parishioner might know where the old records were housed.  Contacted her and she didn’t but she had saved on CD old church newsletters from the 1990’s which contained transcriptions of a diary (NOT ONLINE) that had been donated to the church about the beginning days of the denomination in that area.  It turns out that the diary writer lived across the road from the family I was writing about and was related by marriage.  The writer mentions the family numerous times throughout and I was able to locate deeds and estate paperwork (NOT ONLINE) that was somehow omitted in the county’s online index.  I also better understood why the family relocated to the area.  Making an analysis from simply looking at online sources would have given me the wrong reason for the move. Additionally, all the online sources had a child that died at birth but the diary had recorded specific information as to the cause of the child’s death three months after birth.  The cemetery record only listed the year of birth and death so it appears online sources assumed the child had died at birth by just looking at the tombstone picture posted but that wasn’t the case.  The numerous online trees are wrong because no one looked for a record that wasn’t digitized.

Nondigitized records enabled me to discover church records in another state that identified previous generations. Those records are NOT ONLINE.  I was also able to find pictures of one of the individuals from a church’s commemorative book that was NOT ONLINE.  This led me to find more pictures at a local library that also were NOT ONLINE.

The biggest find, though, was for a related line in a prior generation.  The author mentioned her sibling.  NO ONLINE source ever connected the author (who was not in my tree) to her sister (who was in my tree).  The individual who had children died before mandatory state record requirements so there was no death record that named parents or place of birth..  The NOT ONLINE cemetery record had a maiden last name but not place of birth.  I obtained the diary writer’s death certificate and the maiden names did match, a place of birth was noted and it was not in a state I had searched for the sister’s record.  After I submit my portfolio, I will happily begin researching that line in a different state.

I understand how this happened.  Individual 1 had no children so no one ever bothered to obtain her NOT ONLINE death certificate.  Individual 2 had children but no death certificate.  Lots of trees online for both but no one had ever checked for nondigitized records of Family-Associates-Neighbors.

It is true that the nondigitized information was not quickly accessible.  I did invest a lot of time and a little money, about $8.00 for the death certificate, but the effort was well worth it.  It enabled me to correct wrong online information, connect branches and gain a better understanding of the family dynamics.

What I overheard at my local Family History Center a few days ago made my blood boil and was the last straw for me regarding this topic!  A newbie couple had come in for help as they had found numerous online trees that connected them to a turn of the 20th century gateway ancestor.  Believing the unsourced trees were accurate, they booked a flight and headed off across the pond to visit the ancestral home, a small village in the Mediterranean. Although they do not speak the mother tongue they met a family with the same surname who shared documents that took the family back centuries.  The problem was that those documents did not match birth and emigration records they found online when they returned from their trip.  I could spend another blog going over all that is wrong here but for time sake, I’m just going to mention the comment made by the volunteer genealogist – something to the effect that the online unsourced birth date must be accurate because it had a day, month and year.  Huh?!  Finally, another volunteer recommended that the newbies contact the posters and ask where the date came from.  Not surprisingly, they had and no one responded. None of the volunteers offered to the newbies that perhaps the same surname people they had met and the online posters were not of their line nor that people post wrong information all the time.

What I wanted to hear was “Take that birth info out of your tree until you can prove it.”  Or how about making recommendations to newbies about where they can find additional information, like church records, emigration, naturalization, census, land, probate, etc. and show them how to analyse what they discovered.  If that was too overwhelming then refer them to someone who will do the research accurately.  Perpetuating the myth that online data is correct is wrong!

Will we ever reach a point where one can comfortably say all you need for research is online?  I doubt it.  How could one know what remains out their in the future to find?  No one knows what is hidden in a box in someone’s attic, has been donated but not cataloged in a repository hundreds of miles away by a descendant who left the area or for sale in an antique store somewhere.

Mining  every reasonable location for existing records by following the breadcrumb trail to people and places is critical and always will be necessary.  The reward is worth it.

Why Do We Do Genealogy? Your Input Needed!

Originally published on genealogyatheart.blogspot.com on 1 May 2016.

I think it’s important to reflect on why we do this thing called genealogy.  Take a moment before reading further and get ideas of what is important to you about our discipline.

I identified five factors that are relevant to me.  The first thing that comes to my mind is discovery.   Genealogy unlocks events involving real people whose decisions impacted me personally and continue to do so, even today.  Think of your Gateway Ancestors.  Their choice to uproot and start a new life on a new continent directly influenced who you became.  That emigration may have occurred 400+ years ago or much more recently.  Why did they come?  Oh sure, for a better life, duh!  No, I want to discover what was the final event, the straw that broke the camel’s back, that made them say, “Enough already, we’re out of here!”

Discovery leads me to think about another reason why our work is important.  Perhaps it was best said by George Santayana, “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” [1]  Let’s not look at the big historical picture but instead, narrow it down to your own family.  If your parents are deceased you most likely know what was the cause of death.   If not your parents, think of your grandparents.  It may have been due to lifestyle and that knowledge can be important in regards to your own health. You can make a change by simply knowing what had been.  Very powerful!

Remembering leads me to honoring those that came before us.  I have a much more privileged life due to my ancestors’ resolve and I appreciate their gift to me immensely. Since I can’t personally let them know I write about their impact and record their contributions in my public tree.  It’s small, really, considering how much they did.

I am, by nature, an impatient person.  I get an idea and run with it.  Genealogy is the antithesis of that nature. Patience is critical in this field.  Brick walls do come tumbling down and like earthquakes, there’s no way to predict when that will occur.

The last factor for me is that genealogy is empowering.  When I learn about events that my ancestor’s lived through I am reminded that the small trials and tribulations that I experience aren’t so awful.  I live in Florida and our air conditioner is on it’s last leg.  It is very very warm as a I write this, uncomfortably so.  Being warm is so unimportant compared to fires, epidemics, and the hot topic of discrimination that my predecessors experienced I’m almost thankful it’s just a bad a/c unit in my life. Knowing that I come from a long line of strong individuals enables me to be more confident in knowing I can stand what life throws at me.
On a different note, I’m looking forward to my upcoming road trip to Ft. Lauderdale to attend the National Genealogical Society’s Conference that begins on Wednesday.  If you’re planning on attending look for me and say hello – I’ll be wearing a yellow button that says, “Ask Me” and you’ll find me answering questions and serving as a room monitor.  If you aren’t able to make it, many of the lectures will be live streamed so visit the National Genealogical Society’s website for registration so you can view them.
Due to my upcoming travel, I’ll not blog on Thursday as I typically do but hope to resume next Sunday – same time, same place.  Happy Hunting!

[1] George Santayana.  The Life of Reason: Reason in Common Sense. Scribner’s, 1905: 284.

Three Thoughts About Genealogists’ Recent Comments

Originally published  on genealogyatheart.blogspot.com on 24 Apr 2016.

Over the last 6 weeks I’ve spoken with several other professional genealogists and three conversations are continuing to resonate in my mind.  This is a matter of opinion and as I highly value these individuals knowledge, experience and practice, I want to share their views because I see the world a little differently.

  1. “No tree containing over 2000 individuals can be accurate.”  Hmm, accuracy in identity of the folks we include in our tree is paramount.  If we don’t have the evidence to support that the “John Doe” we have is the father of our “Adam Doe” than we are barking up the wrong tree.  The repercussions are serious – wasted time, the error keeps being repeated ad nauseam by others who don’t check sources and we’re not adhering to the standards.  That being said, I don’t believe there is a finite number that insures accuracy and when the number is reached, it’s over. Genealogy is not a game to win; it’s not “I got more peeps than you do!”  Genealogy is quality.   As genealogists we need to be open and accepting that our work can radically change direction at any time.  As one of my relatives likes to kid me, “So, you really can guarantee that gggggrandma’s children were biologically ggggggrandpas?”  No, but that’s where dna can help.  We need to use all the tools available and dna is definitely one where I need more training and experience.  Learning and growing are important in every field.  Setting a threshold is not.
  2. “I stopped working on my own tree 10 years ago because there was nothing else to be found.”  I totally understand that when one begins to take paying clients time is limited on personal tree research. I feel that pain!  My New Jersey to Ohio Coles keep popping up but I put them aside for everybody else.  I don’t believe, though,  there is ever a time when one can say there is no more information to be found.  We don’t know if there’s a record or photo in someone’s attic, basement, garage, antique store, historical museum or even misfiled in the National Archives.  If you don’t look I can guarantee you won’t find anything!  I’m still hopeful that someday the misfiled Pennsylvania probate records I’m searching for will be discovered.  That newly found document could alter the line so I keep open the fact that my tree is never done and there is always something out there waiting to be discovered.
  3. “I make my online tree private so only serious genealogists will contact me for specific information.”  Perhaps my background in the education field and my early experiences in genealogy influence me to share openly.  My view is that serious genealogists most likely already have what you have.  If they don’t, they will have no qualms about reaching out to you to collaborate, irregardless of whether your tree is public or private.  For those that aren’t “serious,” everyone must start somewhere and if your work is well documented then I’d rather have a newbie take off and run with my work than not.  Making a contact can be intimidating to some; I don’t want anyone to have to reinvent the wheel.  I understand that much time, effort and possibly cost was involved in accumulating your research.  If you want to recoup some of your investment then publish your work. Creating an e-book is easy and inexpensive.

Happy Hunting and now I’m back to Spring Cleaning!

Family Reunion Episode on Finding Your Roots – A Must See!

Originally published on genealogyatheart.blogspot.com on 21 Feb 2016.

Had an interesting week!  Attended two days of an awesome presentation at my schools called Challenge Day which challenges youth and adults to “be the change” in their communities.  It was physically and emotionally exhausting but in a good way. Instead of watching this week’s episode of Finding Your Roots on PBS, I took a webinar offered by the Board of Certified Genealogists which was really interesting and I thought, more beneficial to me as I work in completing my portfolio for submission.

I caught up viewing the Finding Your Roots episode yesterday and want to encourage you to view it if you haven’t already done so.

First, I must admit, I wasn’t wild about the artists portrayed.  I’m not a rapper fan so LL Cool J and Sean Puffy Combs don’t interest me.  Wow, was I surprised!  I seriously think this episode was THE BEST of all of the genealogical shows ever done.

No spoilers here – just watch it if you haven’t seen it.  I loved the use of dna, I loved the wrong initial lines they followed, I just absolutely adored the twists and turns with both artists.  Kudos to how they maturely handled sensitive topics that were uncovered. These two men have the right attitude!  If you’d like to view it click here and enjoy!  Do it soon as the next episode will be available beginning Wednesday so you may not be able to access this.